Learning to See in the Dark

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Lorraine Janzen, an associate professor of English at Nipissing
University, may be best known for her studies of Victorian-era
illustrated books.

Janzen’s poems are aimed at adult audiences, but her choice of topics
ensures a primarily female readership. Decades of feminism have not
radically altered men’s tastes; they would rather read verse aimed at
them, not “Pie poems.” Unfortunately, works such as “Psalms for
great-grandfathers” may attract a narrower gender
demographic—traditional Europeans and their descendants. Many males
would reject “Cross-dressing, or One is not born a woman.” The poet
would not care. That poem is intensely personal, not merely because it
was written “for Kelsey,” her “dear coz,” but also because it
reveals her own discontent with “plots of gender.” Such verse may be
liberating, but is no longer iconoclastic in a land of “transvestite
makeovers” and Cover Girl, a Radio-Canada television sitcom featuring
“drag queens.”

The first poem, “Gravity and Grace I,” contains a puzzling word
break in the phrase “Like a beau / tiful vein of quartz in granite.”
In poetry, words are not usually broken and, if the poet intended to
split that word, why was there no appropriate sign in the text? Janzen
is not a linguistic radical like bill bissett, Erin Mouré, or Nicole
Brossard. If she were trying to make a point, then it is certainly not
apparent to the average reader. That said, Janzen is a thoughtful poet
who may appeal to specialist audiences.